


If The Heavens Ever Did Speak (He's The Last True Mouthpiece)

by Saturdaynightspecial



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dry Humping, Extremely Poetic Porn, First Time, Gained a lot of plot and feelings, Grinding, Hand Jobs, Hands, It gets resolved but you have to work for it, Kissing, Liberal Use of the dream eater link for the author's purposes, Liberal and irreverent use of religious metaphors, Love Confessions, M/M, Now we here, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unresolved Sexual Tension, started as PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 03:42:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20557658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saturdaynightspecial/pseuds/Saturdaynightspecial
Summary: Riku knew he couldn’t make him understand with words, or let him know the depth of his devotion; knew Sora spoke with everything but his voice in every way that mattered and whispered things in other ways if he only listened.There was a line here, something blurring and blotting and waving like a mirage, and Riku—poised, always, to step over it if Sora would just reach back for him.Riku could never deny Sora anything, should he simply ask.Or: Two conversations being had at once, one with hands & hearts.





	If The Heavens Ever Did Speak (He's The Last True Mouthpiece)

**Author's Note:**

> Alt. Title: Riku Sees God  
Alt. Alt. Title: Mr. Hozier Really Said Something With That Song Of His
> 
> This fic began as a casual challenge. I swore I could write "at least 3k of soriku Hand And Wrist Stuff so intimate it may as well be nsfw but isn't, because they're just SO full of feelings, and drag it out so long the reader would want to die before it gets resolved". 
> 
> That's how it started, but it ended up as one of the heaviest, emotionally-charged nsfw things I've ever written, so enjoy. Take breaks, drink water, walk around in a frustrated way, etc etc. 
> 
> I do hope you enjoy.
> 
> Thank you to [fireborn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Fireborn/pseuds/Fireborn) for the most excellent beta!
> 
> \----
> 
> The poem that inspired this concept:
> 
> Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,  
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,  
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,  
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!  
To be so tickled, they would change their state  
And situation with those dancing chips,  
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,  
Making dead wood more bless'd than living lips.  
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,  
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
> 
> Sonnet CXXVIII, Shakespeare

The tinny patter of rain on the metal roof of the highest room of the tower was a small comfort to Riku’s frazzled mind as he sat, head tilted back against the coolness of the stone wall beside his bed, eyes pressed closed and twitching in time with the spasms through his side, his stomach contracting with the randomized spikes of agony. It crawled under his skin in disorganized battalions of fire ants, probably from the nerve damage, he figured—something so deep in him _ Curaga _ couldn’t reach it, something that triggered randomly until he was twitching and curling in on himself on the other side of bathroom doors or Gummi ship hatches or wherever Sora wouldn’t _ see _him coming apart, the agony an uncaring seam ripper to the tapestry of his body.

Everything _ ached _ in this weather—usually he had more warning than this; a simple twinge or two that heralded bigger problems in a matter of days—but three straight days of rain (a rain so heavy even Yen Sid seemed perplexed, said things about a heartless fallout) and heavy training meant this time, he didn’t have a chance to breathe, let alone take his usual precautions.

Of all his permanent injuries, his wrist still remained the most troublesome. It hurt in a different way than his side, something bone deep and empty that felt too hollow, like the dark had hungrily consumed the marrow there from the inside and left the fragile shell behind.

They weren’t fair gambles, with the odds always stacked so high against him, but they were trades he would make again and again, giving pounds of his flesh away to uncaring enemies to wrench Sora’s life from their curling, grasping claws—no matter how many parts of himself he left behind in the aftermath.

His ribs, his hip: final _ gifts _ from Xemnas in exchange for Sora's life. 

His wrist: a lasting, deserved remembrance that he would do _ anything _ for Sora.

Sometimes, he wondered: what would happen if, eventually, he _ ran out _ of pieces? When his heart eventually decided to make the moves that his body couldn’t complete?

But it was too much to think about, just now. Maybe _ ever _ . Not while Sora was here, and breathing, and _ alive _.

His wrist pulsed in time with his heart, every beat a distant, delayed signal to clench his teeth down on another strangled noise by the time the message reached his head, _ careful _ — always so _ careful _ of Sora, soundly asleep on the other side of the room judging by the barely-there snores. Riku’s dream eater-enhanced eyes tracked the gentle rise and fall of his chest in the dim light of their room, Sora’s red blankets pulled so far up his face they covered his mouth to rest securely below his nose, both hands fisted in them around his cheek. Like when they were kids and Sora had to sleep fully _ under _ the blankets, head and all, to feel safe, mingled with the need to snap awake at any moment, born from years of light sleeping before battles. 

Well, _ that part _ they shared. 

The stained glass skylight in the tower ceiling bled colors on the hardwood floor in the endless twilight, the elegant, multi-toned design a little like a nautilus split in half in a wide arc on the floor, and Riku focused on that ghostly projection through tearing eyes; inhale, count the chambers. _ One, two, three, four _ —he knew how many there were, already, but— _ exhale, name the colors _ —pink, green, red, flash of white agony streaked across his vision, his teeth ground together on the feeling, the jagged slash through his side like he wanted to _ rip pieces _ from it, rend the flesh just to let whatever was _ wrong in him out _ —he was shaking but _ that wasn’t right, he lost it, start over. _

It wasn’t so much_ pain _ anymore as a constant, throbbing reminder that blurred his thoughts together into a constant stream of low-frequency noise, the waves prevented him from doing much more than holding the injured wrist protectively to his body, head bowed as he wrapped around it, his other hand digging harsh lines into the pain-laced skin of the bad wrist.

It only took one _ slip _, one split second lapse of attention on his part—he hissed through his teeth on the crest of another strike through his nerves, fingers twitching involuntarily with the feeling, and Sora stirred, his head falling a little off the pillow, hands unclenching a little from the blanket as his brows drew together.

Riku froze, unwilling to even breathe. _ Shit. _His eyes lept to the wooden door, but there was no way he’d make it in time, not without the very questions he longed to avoid. Instead, molten discomfort rose from his stomach like bile and set his heart to pounding.

A yawn broke the silence, Riku only allowed himself to breathe after his lungs railed against him and he _ knew _ Sora was awake, the damage was well and truly done; could feel him strain against what was left of the dream eater bond they still faintly shared in waking life like a child poking curiously at the edges of a tide pool before it faded out as Sora gained consciousness.

“Riku?” came Sora’s crackled voice, and Riku raised his guilt-stricken eyes to meet his best friend’s across the circular room, Sora blearily blinking as he slowly pulled himself up to sit. “Why’re you—’wake?” He broke his own question with a second loud yawn, so wide Sora’s jaw cracked with it. It sounded too _ harsh _ against the silence Riku had been cultivating for hours, like someone yelling in a library.

“I could ask you the same question,” Riku said softly, his own voice just as cracked from disuse. His heart expanded a little at the sight of a rumpled, sleep-addled Sora in a loose tank that was falling off one shoulder and oversized, crown-patterned sleep pants, the blanket bunched around his waist like a discarded cocoon.

Of all the versions of Sora Riku had seen, _ this one _ —the one just for his eyes, fresh from sleep before the weight of expectation settled on him like a mantle, in their little shared bedroom at the top of the tower—was his favorite. He wondered if that was selfish, if it still counted against him on the cosmic scales if all he was doing was _ looking _ , like he had been _ looking _ for years.

He’d been having _ odd thoughts _ like that lately, and he blamed the fact that the only books on the shelves lining the tower room covered myths and religions of worlds he’d never heard of, and on insomnia-haunted nights like this one he devoured them like a starving man, trying to cram all the empty, shadow-ridden places in him with other people’s stories. 

It never quite sated.

Sometimes he thought he would die of just _ looking _ at him; understood why people kept making their stories to try and capture the essence of divine things, possessed and half mad with the need to communicate that _ want _.

He didn’t need to see Sora to know he was frowning, taking in the way Riku was huddled against the tower wall, knees pulled up to his chest, sitting the wrong way across his bed. Probably cataloguing the way Riku was helpless to release his wrist, and he knew he was_ seen _ , because Sora had been _ looking _ too. 

Riku had caught him at it a few times through the years, being well trained in all things Sora, but it was so hard to stay objective when he had hope warring with skepticism behind his eyes, both of them trying to figure out if Sora _ really _ was staring at his chest when Riku had pinned him during a spar, or whether his eyes really were tracking the curve of his throat as he gulped from his water bottle, face dusted red when Riku finally turned and Sora snapped his chin down and away, or if the insistent brushes of Sora’s hand as they walked together meant what he wished it did.

So, Riku had been_ looking _ , and sometimes he thought: _ Maybe _. But maybe not. For someone so open, Sora was sometimes strangely hard to read.

He startled as Sora flung himself across the room, crossing the short gap between their beds in a purposeful burst of bare feet on hardwood before bouncing into the far edge of the mattress. The chain reaction sent Riku off balance, and he braced with his bad wrist against the bed before he remembered himself.

His breath hissed through his teeth, and Sora’s face snapped to his, calculating and open, until his eyes flicked down Riku’s form and back up.

“Sorry,” Sora said immediately, sitting back on his heels carefully, so as not to jostle anything else of delicacy. He had both hands on his lap, twisting around each other before he raised one, thought better of it, and returned it to his lap.

Somehow that hurt worse than the pain, seeing a Sora who had become _ aware _ of himself in ways he never was, before—not with _ Riku _, at least. Never with Riku.

“Riku...” He sounded so _ worried, _ and Riku would _ never _ live it down if that was the case.

“I’m fine, Sora. Go back to sleep,” he gritted out. It wasn’t the most convincing he’d ever been, but it was hard to deal with Sora two feet away from him—_ on the same bed _ , his mind blared like a foghorn above the din— _ and _ pain flaring across his body at the same time.

Sora huffed, crossing his arms to pin Riku with a _ look _ . “You’re _ not _ fine and I know it. So what’s up?”

“We don’t have to talk about this now. You need your sleep, you leave in the morning.”

Sora rolled his eyes skyward. “Sure, _ mom _. So do you. So shut up and tell me.”

Unabashedly, Riku felt his mouth quirk. “Those are two seperate requests.”

Sora groaned and smashed his face into the duvet. Riku took the split second to grip tightly at his wrist, pushing calloused fingers into the spaces between tendons in a futile attempt for split second relief. “I’m too tired for this.”

“So go back to sleep,” Riku told him.

“_ You wish _,” Sora refuted, and stuck his tongue out petulantly until Riku was reaching out to grab it before Sora leaned back at the last second, an old game that Sora rarely lost; Sora finally breaking the end of the retreat with a yawn that had Riku copying it. Sora was always contagious, always something Riku mirrored unconsciously in every way we could.

Riku was mid-retort, the whole string of _I do wish, actually_ in his mouth when his wrist spasmed again, and his fingers went automatically to wrap around it, to contain the agony in the press of his hands.

He tried to smooth the discomfort from his expression, but it was too late. Sora was perceptive when he wanted to be, when he found something worth considering, and he felt his eyes on him now.

“_ Riku _. Seriously. What’s wrong?” Sora leaned over, frowning, and Riku looked away, hoping against hope for ten seconds to sort this out before it all came spilling out of him and onto Sora’s lap.

_ Everything, _ thought Riku. _ Don’t say _ ** _that._ **

“Talk to me. Please.” Sora had moved a few inches closer, still visibly restrained, the right of movement arrested in every tense muscle of his shoulders, his hair sticking up everywhere it could reach, his face masked with concern.

Riku closed his eyes. He wouldn’t get those seconds; he rarely did. He inhaled; exhaled.

“My wrist, mostly.” It wasn’t a lie, but it sure wasn’t the whole truth. He could never seem to fight the urge to protect Sora, even now. “Sometimes...my side.”

Something guilty flickered across Sora's face, because they had avoided _ talking _ about this before, and the prospect of suddenly having to face it was too much—Riku wished he could put it off for a time when they weren’t both exhausted, a time when he had time to prepare what he was going to say. Sora was capable of being such a good listener when he wanted to be, when he decided you were worthy of his full attention, and then he set those unsettling eyes on you and _ saw _ you—or perhaps that was just Riku. It wasn’t so much that Sora didn’t have enough attention to go around; more like he had _ so much _, a whole wide, rapid twisting river of empathy, and Riku figured he was always struggling to divert it into as many peoples’ streams as possible.

Even so, there was never enough time. Not for this, not for talking about _ feelings _, even ones growing over each other in their eagerness to meet, and not for growing up, but all of those things were happening anyway, all at once. 

Whether Riku tried to throw himself in the path of them or not.

“Does it...happen a lot?”

Sora’s tiny voice snapped him back like it always did, one of Sora’s hands wrapped around his elbow and _ tap tap tapping _on the inside, a nervous little half-gesture that had always betrayed his discomfort.

_ Talking _was especially harder when he couldn’t get his vision to go straight; he could feel himself straining not to snap. The air in the room gained several pounds of pressure.

“No.” A pause. _ Tell him the truth _ . _ He deserves that. _ “Yes.” A pause. “More...recently,” he said, the words dragging their feet on their way out of him.

“And you’ve tried..?”

_ Everything _ . Cure, potions, special audiences with renowned healers. The injuries were old, had come together wrong. Instant damage, stuff they hadn’t seen before, _ etcetera _ . They were very sorry to not be of assistance. Then, the whole damn world went and tried to end _ again _ , and Riku ran _ that _ time sensitive ship aground.

“_ Yeah _,” Riku said. “I have.”

Sora sat there, his head bowed, eyes downcast, and his hands fisted in Riku’s blankets, bent and twisted around himself, his limbs the branches of a willow tree, weeping.

It broke his heart.

“Riku. You can tell me when it hurts. I...I know it’s been happening. Or, like, I didn’t _ know _exactly what was up, but I can tell you’ve been acting—weird. Off. You use your right side more when we spar, and I—I noticed the...the limp.”

_ Great _ . So Sora _ was _ looking, just not in the way his foolish heart hoped. Cataloguing his weaknesses. Something bitter took root in his throat, and was sending poisonous things out through his mouth before he could stop it.

“What_ good _ would that do?” Riku snapped, his patience threadbare as he let his head tip back against the wall, the coolness there refreshing on his neck, sweaty as it was. Unbidden, he thought: _ not like you tell _ me _ when you hurt, either. “ _Sorry,” He tacked on gruffly. 

His head swam.

“I don’t know,” Sora said eventually, snapping Riku back to the darkened room. “It would...make me feel better, I guess. No, wait, that’s _ not _ what I—” He stopped himself with a frustrated sound. 

For a moment they were both quiet, nothing but the sound of two sets of lungs and the rain _ drip drip dripping _ down the glass, and Riku entertained the idea of Sora, hurt by him again, leaving the room, or the tower, or his life. Riku could hear the rain pooling on the wooden windowsill above the bed, still cracked to allow for a breeze, for something to break the stillness of his pain.

This was exactly why Riku wanted to spare Sora a problem he couldn't solve. One day, he was going to learn the disappointment of not being able to _ fix _ something, and Riku hoped it wouldn’t be because of _ him _. 

He heard Sora shift closer, a soft rustle of blankets and the slow, rhythmic bellows of his breathing and the rain mixing into something comforting, a soothing balm on blown out nerves and a heart overgrown with strain.

When something cool glanced across his forehead, feather-light, he nearly flinched.

“You’re really warm,” Sora muttered, the back of his palm pressed to Riku’s head in a move that had been reversed many times before this. The flutter of his breathing—unsteady, now—felt far too close. Riku felt his throat tighten as he swallowed.

“_ You’re _ just cold,” Riku mumbled back, and Sora just huffed at him.

The hand withdrew, and Riku opened his eyes to follow it, lamenting its passage back to its owner as it disappeared back into the folds of his lap. Thought of his own hands, there, instead—surely that crossed _ some _ cosmic line into sin, he knew it even as he recoiled from it but oh—he _ wanted _ to, had to swallow hard against the urge, against the strange enormity of his thoughts, pain and devotion and worshipful sacrifice.

“Can I see it?” Sora asked quietly, eyes fever bright in the dark room; glittering and daring. “Your...the wrist. The bad one.”

Sora worried his lip between his teeth and Riku almost chided him. _ That’s how you keep chapping them _, he would say, were he a stronger man in this moment. But he wasn’t, so instead his eyes locked tight to that motion, hypnotized into place.

“Sora…” he breathed, but Sora was already extending his hand.

(_ The hand of god reaching out to his creation _, supplied Riku’s mind, flashing wildly back to an illustration he’d seen earlier that night.)

Sora’s fingers extended, hesitantly, then twisted, the palm unfurling thereafter like a welcoming blossom, the pull of it magnetic, Riku’s whole soul screaming at him to _ take it, take it, take it _even as he was curling both his own hands into fists; a useless ward against temptation.

“Please,” said Sora. It was enough.

Ultimately, Riku could never deny Sora anything, should he simply _ ask _.

He fought the urge to draw back even he held his arm aloft; even as Sora reached forward gingerly to take it between his palms. Sora traced the skin there, gently, as if looking for visible signs of pain, every gentle _ sweep _ and _ press _ into the valley between the tendons of his wrist something wine-sweet and honey slow to his head.

Sora already had his heart, let alone his hands. Riku only hoped he _ knew _, but instead he shivered, clamping down on his traitorous tongue as Sora gently eased open his fist (when had he clenched it?); traced the lines there with calloused fingers in easy swipes, from life line to heart line, from wrist to smooth fingernails, and over the knobby links of his knuckles in a motion that nearly tickled with the drag of Sora’s warming fingertips on his suddenly clammy skin.

It sent tingles down his arm and an inconvenient pooling of heat to his stomach that he did not have the capacity to deal with now, on top of everything—Sora probably didn’t even _ notice _ what he was doing to Riku, divine in his innocence, and Riku could never tell him, could _ never _voice it.

“Sora,” he said finally, voice too dry already, tugging his hand against Sora’s hold, but he held fast like a rope yanked taut, and all the air left Riku instead, because—

_ His fate, sealed with a kiss— _

Sora’s head suddenly dipped. Riku’s eyes fixed on how his body curved upon itself like a quivering bowstring—the motion graceful in its strength, in its precision—as he pressed his lips to the place where Riku’s palm met his wrist in an uneven junction.

A sort of _ tingle _ spread out from the spot, radiating up his arm and into his shoulder to make a home somewhere in his chest, and in its echo there was something _ less _ . Riku’s alarmed _ what are you doing _ died in his throat with the sudden and _ ringing _absence of pain.

“Did that—“ Sora started, then stopped, stuttered, inhaled, started again as he touched his own left wrist with his other hand, brow furrowed. “I don’t know why I did that,” he said, wonderingly, like he was looking at _ Riku _ for answers—and Riku, irrationally, wanted to _ sob _.

He did not. Instead, as always, he waited for Sora to come to him and hoped he wasn’t wearing everything on his face.

“I...think I took some of it,” Sora murmured eventually, And Riku looked at him like he was an _ angel _ , every nerve singing with sudden nervous relief and adrenaline and _ joy-to-the-world _.

“What...do you mean?”

“I think I...feel it? It’s like. Yeah. Feels like when I broke my ankle that one time, except. Yeah. It hurts like that, I guess…” Sora went on, unseeing, roving eyes tracking the ceiling and its kaleidoscopic colors, hypnotizing as it moved in whorls across the rounded cupola. 

It was _ impossible _ , but it was true. It felt... _ less _ , like Sora had somehow dragged the feeling into his own body instead, a _ transfer _ from Riku to Sora. Not for the first time, Riku wished there was a manual for this _ dream eater stuff _ , because his addled brain could come up with nothing better to explain— _ this _.

“Sora…” he said instead. “It’s not...safe, I don’t—we don’t really know how the link works, yet, and what if you hurt yourself? I don’t...Yen Sid didn’t say anything about a...a pain transfer...”

Riku trailed off, then began to tug again, little halfhearted drags that Sora allowed for a few seconds before his expression set, carved as if in marble.

Sora snorted. “Yen Sid doesn’t know about anything,” he said derisively. Which, Riku figured, was a fair point. “Besides. I can _ handle _ a little pain,” Sora told him, eyes like the hearts of blazing coals in the dark, so hot they _ burned _ . “You _ know _ I can.”

Riku knew, _ of course _ he knew. It was just that Sora carried most of his wounds on the inside, packed them full of gauze until he could forget about them and call them healed.

But, ultimately, Sora was a wave, and Riku merely a passenger. When he wished it, he crashed upon him with such force that Riku felt his will dissolving, so many grains of sand in the helpless thrall of the tides.

“Okay,” he said faintly. “Be...be careful.” He didn’t know what he was warning him against, what dangers could lurk in _ himself _.

“Always,” Sora said, an encouraging smile on his face that warmed Riku to his toes.

Riku relaxed his hand, an armistice, a surrender, _ a kiss in a garden _. Sora’s body answered, and Sora’s mouth smiled, and Sora’s lips returned to his skin.

Riku’s eyes slid shut with a groan as more of the pain left him in a sudden rush, coaxed out by Sora's gently open lips, the shockwaves dulled and pulled into that petal-softness to disappear somewhere inside, to make a home in him like Riku longed to.

Sora tilted his head, the ghostly, teasing feel of his breath left goosebumps behind him as he lowered his chin, and Riku filled the silence between them with trembles.

_ You’re a miracle _ , Riku almost said, choking it back down his throat around a swallow. Sora was uncorking something in him, easing out some long stoppered thing and now it was welling between his hands and _ over and out _—

His lip, already bitten, was clenched between his teeth now, terrified if he allowed one thing to escape him in his weakness, it would all tumble out.

Agonizingly, so _ slowly _ , Sora flicked lake-dark eyes up to meet his, and sealed his lips around Riku’s pulse point. It fluttered like a bird as Sora opened pliant, gentle lips to press and release, lingering there, luxuriating in the _ feel _ of it—and Riku felt the lightest, curious press of tongue on the place where his wrist had never quite healed straight.

He gasped, the noise clawing its way from his throat in surprise, and Sora’s dark eyes on him locked; dilated with interest like a hunting bird, and Riku had never felt so _ vulnerable _ under that gaze.

Sora could do anything, he knew, in this moment. All feeling had been leached out of him, all thought had fled in favor of life every nerve alight like liquid fire under his skin, under his wrist, as Sora took it in both his hands and slid up, the press of his nails little pinpricks as he walked them upwards, up and up and up by inches, and Riku dared to wonder if the pretense of a pain transfer still applied to _ this _ , Sora’s curious, fascinated eyes on him like he’d always dreamed and his _ lips _ and—

Riku was no longer sitting upright; his spine had liquified and the only thing keeping him up was the hard press of the wall behind him as Sora _ breathed _ on his forearm, both warm palms holding him there, holding him steady and the flick-flick of his eyes, drinking in Riku’s face, and Riku, _ oh _ — _ afraid _ of what he saw there, knew he was a quivering mess with no hope of hiding, with no want to hide.

Sora’s head dipped again, his shoulders curling as he nuzzled into Riku’s forearm; the gentle butterfly drag of his eyelashes sinful against the oversensitive skin. “Riku,” he sighed, like an afterthought, and Riku’s free hand came up shakily, before he could stop it, and grabbed the back of Sora’s collar, the fabric between his fingers warm from the skin beneath—_ so thin _ that he couldn’t deny himself a _ brush _, the slightest tuck of fingers beneath that seam.

“_ Sora _ ,” he tried, but it was creaking and _ broken _ in all the wrong places, like an old set of stairs, and Sora seemed surprised, his inhale too long and deep—flick, flick, again—his eyes going to Riku’s left, then his right, before he closed them and his breath across the inside of his elbow made Riku’s toes curl and his stomach contract, protective, his breathing so ragged that the edges of his vision were speckled as the barrier between pain and pleasure was breached by that wave, retract and release.

Sora’s lips pressed again in a lethargic, lazy drag that made Riku’s arm twitch in his grip—Sora smiled against him— and he felt it in every nerve ending he had, and the drag of teeth across his veins made him whimper, his limbs more flowing than working any longer as Sora darted his tongue out to taste the skin there, and Riku melted backwards, his head awash in honey and the sweet shockwaves of Sora’s kiss.

He had to focus on breathing, because his lungs felt too small to fit all the air in the quiet room, so small he doubted all the air in heaven and earth would be enough to sustain him, blow him up from the inside as Sora’s touch passed from curious to something directed, as Sora turned all of that glorious focus to _ him _.

It was too much to bear. It was one thing to look to God, but another for God to look back, to _ answer _, to take him in his hands, the ecstasy of the believer.

Riku wouldn’t survive it.

“Can I…” Sora had released him, licked his lips and glanced meaningfully _ down _ , and Riku nearly forgot himself in that moment, fingers twitching as he longed to drag Sora down on top of him to _ kiss and kiss and kiss _ , the desire so _ magnetic _ it reached into his bones with iron hooks and _ pulled _, heralded his hubris—as if an angel could get so close to God. 

“Can I see the scar?” He asked softly. 

Shakily, Riku exhaled, boneless.

“_ Please _ ,” Sora breathed. His hands looked so _ warm, _ they had been warm _ on him _ and all Riku could think was that perhaps he could drive away the cold—in his room, in his bones, in his life.

He had always been weak to the sun.

Riku nodded, shifting away from the wall to lie flatter, breathing labored as he fisted his hands in the blankets to keep from _ touching _ , from trying to dig things out of this that weren’t there. Sora, hovering over him, shifting his knees on either side of his legs until leaning towards—close, _ too close _, warm breath ghosting down his torso in a sinuous drag, sliding down his body to fiddle with the hem of his shirt. Sora’s hesitant fingers played along the bottom edge before Riku nodded, and Sora slid it up, hands twitching, dropping and catching the edge; his fingers catching on the sides of Riku’s ribcage with the upward drag of the cotton against skin.

Riku bit his lip to contain the forming sound, the feeling of fabric exposing the line of his stomach so intimate, somehow, in _ this _ room, in _ this _ space between night and daybreak. He felt like a butterfly, pinned and quivering between Sora’s hands-like-nails, his eyes holding him in place.

“You’re sweating,” Sora observed, his touch light and cool. The heat simmering beneath Riku’s skin was a wildfire.

He swallowed. “Sorry,” Riku said. Because he wasn’t sure it was all from pain, shame and resolution warring in him as it always.

“Don’t be _ sorry _ for not being okay,” Sora said firmly, his cool fingers tracing the edge of the scar, the skin gnarled and twisted around itself in ways that made Riku hesitant to _ show _ anyone, the urge to yank the shirt down so _ strong _ , suddenly, that he fisted his hands in the blankets to resist it. “I know it’s...really hard for you, but you’re not _ alone _, Riku.”

“I know _ that _ ,” he began, because he did, had thought he’d gotten _ better _ at honesty. “But that’s not—“ the issue. It was layers upon layers, dirt piled on a grave full of _ things _ that he would sooner throw himself upon than let Sora witness.

A new surge of pain cut him off, ripped through his side and he felt himself twitch away from Sora’s hands, though he pressed up a second later in apology. Sora removed them instantly, as though burned, sliding them up and away to hover around Riku’s sides.

“I _ hate _ this,” Sora said wetly, his hands braced on either side of Riku’s ribcage, eyes welling, shiny in the dark, his head bowing to obscure his expression.

“It wasn’t _ your _ fault,” Riku said instantly, a conversation he’d had with Sora in his mind thousands of times but never had the courage to voice, afraid of his assumption being _ right _.

“I _ know _ it wasn’t,” Sora said, but Riku had doubts. “I just—sometimes, I really wish I could go back in time and stop it from happening.”

“Hey,” Riku said softly. “Once was_ more _ than enough.”

“It was twice,” Sora said distantly, his thumbs forming small circles on Riku’s skin, Riku trying not to picture those circles _ lower _, around the dip of his hip bones. His stomach tightened.

Riku hissed through his teeth as the wave hit him again and left his nerves and thoughts twitching, but he grabbed at Sora’s hands desperately before he could wrench away again, solid and real. “Sora, it’s okay. I don’t...mind.” 

“That’s the thing, Riku, you _ never _ mind,” Sora said, face so earnest it _ hurt _ , and his fingers crawled burning paths up his sides again, reminding him of their proximity as Sora caught his eyes and _ arrested _ him there, tightened his knees around Riku’s thighs and _ arrested _him there, too.

“I _ wish _ you _ minded _, sometimes. Especially when it’s because of me.”

Oh. And there it was: the crux of the issue.

Riku raised his head to see him better, already rising to his elbows, one hand making to pull his shirt back down. “Sora, that’s _ not _—“

“It is,” he said quietly, interrupting the motion with his own hands, finding Riku’s on the ridges of his ribs. “It’s terrible. Even if you don’t mind.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t say you’re _ sorry _ again,” Sora said vehemently. “Don’t you _ dare _, Riku.”

So he didn’t, didn’t speak it into the dark-like silence between them, but it hung there, heavy and dense like evening fog.

“You feel like—like _ this _ —and I never noticed. You’ve been hurting so much and I never saw.” Sora buried his fist in his tank, pushed his hand to clench over his heart like he felt it there, instead, a gesture so _ Sora _ Riku’s own chest felt like it zipped shut, tight, as the air was punched out at once. Absently, Sora was rubbing the wrist in a motion Riku had seen _ himself _ doing in mirrors hundreds of times.

Riku wanted to ask him: _ Which pain _? Both of them were just marks of devotion, the exquisite agony of an acolyte under the strikes of the whip when he knew he suffered for something divine.

He was sure he couldn’t confess _ that _ to Sora, the words hot and guilty burning in his throat; sure the muted colors streaming through the ceiling wasn’t crowning Sora in a halo, but in that moment wasn’t sure what was true.

Sora scrubbed at sudden tears anyway, from his spot above Riku, holding him down. “_ I’m _ the one who’s sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Riku said, steel like certainty building his words. “Do you hear me, Sora? _ Never. _ Not one single thing.”

Without thinking, he slid his hands up to grasp Sora’s wrists.

His wrists—delicate, like bird bones in Riku’s hands, were still wet from where Sora had brushed against his eyes, and Riku thumbed the moisture there, drawing little circles and sighs out of the skin, grounding himself. Sora was so _ small _ , which was easy to forget with so much _ spirit _ bleeding out of him all the time, but he knew it then, knew it intimately as he drew Sora’s wrist to his own lips in unspoken apology.

The tears were holy water on his tongue, and he allowed himself one sinner’s indulgence in the softest petal-brush of his mouth, closed around the skin, reveling in the sudden answering _ leap _ and shudder down Sora’s forearm. 

Riku knew he couldn’t _ make _ him understand with words, knew Sora spoke with everything but his voice in every way that mattered, whispered things in other ways if he only listened.

They had always understood each other, in that.

“Oh,” he said, like a revelation. “_ Oh _ .” Sora seemed to _ shiver _, and press into Riku the slightest bit, his pulse thrumming under his skin and into Riku’s hands. Riku, helpless, wondered if this wasn’t another dream. 

Sora moved, finally, held Riku’s hands with his own until they were entwined, and squeezed, just once in reassurance. Then he glanced _ down, _laughing a little through the remnants of tears. 

“Here. Let me….”

Riku _ knew _ it was coming, but—

Sora paused, hands braced on his stomach, still hesitant.

“Does your side...still hurt a lot?”

Riku choked on his tongue, then tried again. _ Tell the truth _ . “Some,” he answered. “But—Sora, I don’t—want _ you _ to hurt, either.” Didn’t want Sora to suffer the wounds he had saved him from taking, even retroactively—even a _ shadow—he had to protect him. _

“Riku...” Sora sighed. “You don’t _ get _ it. I _ want _ to share it, okay? Just. Would you just _ let _ me _ help _ you?”

“You help me all the time,” Riku began, but Sora _ shushed _ him, like they were back in school and passing notes and giggling about it—shushed him by suddenly leaning over, peering so deeply into his eyes he could probably see Riku’s soul peeking out behind them. How vulnerable it was, to be _ seen _ by Sora, at his weakest, every nerve _ screaming _ at him to pull that face down to his own lowly flesh.

There was silence above him and Sora stared down, breathing softly across his face, and then he bit his lip once more, white ridges like peaks on glistening pink from the press of his tongue, pressing like _ Riku _ longed to press—and Riku closed his eyes with a shuddering exhale. His stomach felt too tight, his lips too empty without anything under them.

“Riku. Look at me. Please.”

He didn’t_ want _ to look, a mere mortal in the presence of Cupid, of light in human form, laid barer than if he were naked, helpless to flash the truth in his eyes, in his heart, in his body. How could Sora not _ see _ it on him? 

If he were being honest—and he was, right now, under Sora’s hands, one of them playing lightly over his brow—he couldn’t be anything else.

Perhaps, he wanted to burn.

So he opened his eyes.

“There you are,” Sora said fondly, so open in that moment Riku forgot to breathe himself; had to rip his eyes away from that smiling mouth and down, eyes locked instead on the glinting silver crown and the tank slipping down to expose a few inches of collarbone and shoulder, stark little freckle-splattered valleys of skin in between that make Riku’s mouth dry, _ dry _.

“Is this—_ Okay _ ?” Sora asked finally, and Riku could not speak, could not move for fear of shattering whatever spell this was. He wanted to ask: Is _ what _ okay? _ How I long so much this is the loveliest of tortures? How I wish you would devour me? Is it okay to want this much? _

Instead, he pressed closer, hesitantly leaned up to slide his hand to the back of Sora’s neck and tangle in the fine hair there, revel in the strands wrapping his fingertips, and buried his face in his neck, inhaling salt and _ Sora _, felt himself shaking against him, and nodded minutely.

Sora’s arms came up to grasp his shoulders and the sound he released was the soft song of summer, a sound so pleased and open it nearly killed him. 

“Okay,” Sora said quietly. “Lay back down for me.”

Sora gently pulled back enough to allow Riku to flow down to his back like they had practiced the movement, each heart a mirror to its other. Somewhere in his hazy mind, Riku wondered _ what _ was happening, but the rest of him _ clung and held, _ knew if this was a dream, then so _ be _ it, for communion this holy could only be such.

Sora’s kiss found his ribs (the missing rib of Adam, Riku thought, wondering if Sora had it within _ him, _ if they would have shared one), the hesitant, butterfly brush of lips on gnarled skin, the curious sensation of _ knowing _ it was happening but the nerves not quite _ connecting _ , the pathways severed but his heart making up the difference, like his body forming the circuit— a conduit for feeling, for _ this _.

He felt Sora’s gasp against his skin, the recession of pain gradual, like a damp cloth dabbing away a fever, _ coolness _ flooding where once there was pain and cracking skin as Sora drew it off, moisture feeding the desert of his body by the measures of a storm.

Sora’s unearthly eyes found his in the dark and he shivered, his hand raising of its own accord to stroke, to brush Sora’s hair from his eyes, to feel the stuttered breath on the exhale. He wanted to catch that breath in his palms and bring it to his lips, _ drink _ it in like lush incense to the temple of his body—before he’d thought better of it, two fingers had hooked under Sora’s chin, and Sora the fish, flowing with him, up and up until they were braced, Sora's hands upon Riku upon Sora.

He was hovering over Riku, braced on arms on either side of his torso as he breathed, shaky and unsure, and he squeezed his eyes shut, and Riku _ dared _ for a moment to hope that the feeling stretched taut between them was real, that Sora was feeling it too.

Riku curled his hands around Sora’s forearms.

They traveled of their own accord up the system of Sora’s veins like passages, and it took everything in him not to _ pull _ , _ tug _ and _ drag _ until they were flush together with nothing between them but fabric, but he stalled, wrapped his palms around the inside of Sora’s elbows and pressed in, rapt, as the skin—soft, like velvet under his palms—went darker under his thumb, the thrum of his heartbeat fast and strong, like it always was.

The backs of his forearms were warm, the hair soft as peach fuzz—and Sora nudged forward the smallest bit to allow Riku to trace up the bony ridges of his elbows, traveling higher, and he quivered, just once—a full body motion, restrained like Sora never was. 

They had touched before, but this was _ another _ conversation, a loaded one, and Riku was helpless to stop his hands from speaking for him. Something had shifted, the air heavier in a far different way, in a way that spoke of _ expectation _.

“Riku,” Sora finally said, his lips parted around the word as Riku’s eyes snapped back up to his face, the pink swell and press of tongue and he was flayed open before him, all but begging without words.

Sora leaned forward, and Riku saw his adam’s apple bob on the swallow—thought about how this must’ve been how it was, to be offered _ the _ apple and told not to eat, what sweet, delirious torture this was—to be in the presence of everything you desired, teetering on the precipice, of paradise before you and innocence behind.

He wanted to drag his _ teeth _ along that throat, wanted to feel the thin skin there, press kisses like prayers into that expanse until it was full, full of _ want _ and _ him _. 

Sora’s fingers found his mouth.

Feather light, Sora’s thumb traced the swell of his bottom lip, the pressure, the drag of it like something otherworldly. Riku’s eyes slid closed as he shook, praying to gods he didn’t remember, praying for Sora to stop and _ never _ stop, torn in so many directions the hand against his mouth was the only thing he was sure of, so he wrapped his own fingers around that wrist again, an unspoken agreement.

Riku’s lips parted.

He closed them around Sora’s thumb in a gentle caress, the answering gasp a choir of angels in his ears, a celestial sound carrying him home as Sora’s arms finally gave, gave so that Riku caught him and wound supportive arms around his back, pulled him forward until they were laid out, Sora’s weight pressing him down into the sheets, pressing everywhere.

Something wild uncurled just behind his chest.

Gloriously, his vision full of night-dark eyes and freckles like stars and a mouth parted enough to allow for panting, warm breath across his mouth that Riku wanted to breathe in, wanted to take every part of Sora into himself and horde it there, to grasp it like a holy thing, cage his hands around it so the light shone through his skin.

Riku _ wanted _ , wanted so much it curled in him and reached out, his hands _ burned _ to be on Sora, burned like he was the only way to make it stop, so he rested hesitant palms on his back until Sora shifted up, and they slid lower with him, to the gap between his tank and waistband.

Sora _ looked _ at Riku like he maybe he wanted to burn.

“I—” Sora tried, having to lift himself to meet Riku’s eyes, but his shaking arms gave, and he braced himself on Riku’s chest, spreading too-warm calloused hands over his collarbones, the pressure wrenched a sound from Riku, one he’d been biting his cheek to keep down, restrained like he was right now in the terrible ecstasy of seeing a God on earth.

“_ Sora _ ,” he said again, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say, what to _ ask _ for—or _ how _ to say it, so he stared up into those eyes helplessly and _ hoped _ Sora understood him.

Sora’s strength failed him, finally—he braced himself on collapsed elbows, but they were well and truly tangled now, both eyes tight shut as Sora shifted to gain his balance and slid a thigh aside Riku’s that brought their hips into alignment so quickly Riku saw stars, head thrown back to the covers.

“_ Fuck _,” Sora hissed—eyes squeezed suddenly shut, braced and rigid against Riku’s answering groan.

Sora froze there, panting for millennia as he shook under Riku’s hands, gathering himself as Riku pressed comforting circles into the planes of his back, mindless—his breathing so ragged he would have felt self-conscious if Sora wasn’t in a similar state, the insistent press of his ribcage as he heaved against Riku’s chest a beatitude. 

He shifted, arching his back slightly to alleviate the pressure on _ everything _ , the _ weight _ between their hips—and Sora nearly sobbed when Riku brushed against him with his thigh. “ _ Riku _,” he gasped, his voice breaking on the syllables, crashing on the rocks as the tide dragged Riku under with him, fabric bunching under his hands like clumps of sand.

“_ Sora _ ,” he hissed, more of a whisper than anything. _ Sora, Sora, Sora. _

“_ I—ahhh _ “ Sora tried to say, but he interrupted himself, pressed down experimentally and Riku felt him, the warmth and _ hardness _ there, and—_oh_—

All Riku could manage was a whimper, leaning up enough to bury his nose behind Sora’s ear, pressing finally in a kiss, _ desperate _ and _ needy _ and nose full of sea salt and sun, blood thrumming in his veins and through his hips, out of his mind with the need for _ something more _.

There was a _ line _ here, something blurring and blotting and waving like a mirage, and Riku—poised, always, to step over if Sora would just _ reach _ back for him.

“R-Riku,” Sora said, pulling back enough to see Riku’s eyes, pupils wide and dark as the night sky. Riku saw himself in them for a second, a reflection for which there was no need: he _ knew _ what he must look like.

“Can we…” he started, then stopped, let his eyes slide down to the side and then closed in a frustrated whisper and fisted both hands in Riku’s shirt as Riku dug comforting fingers into the tension of his lower back, circles and circles and circles as Sora leaned into it. “I mean, can _ I _ …” Sora stopped again, licked his lips and Riku drank the sight in, memorized every ridge and crest in the split second journey, and _ looked _.

Sora _ looked _ back, Riku’s entire body hummed to his frequency, every cell resonating like the tubes of a struck organ, all of them singing an aria.

Sora was staring at his lips.

“_ Just _ . Just k-kiss me,” Sora forced out, eyes squeezed closed as he _ begged _, and Riku’s heart bloomed like a revived rose as he pulled back, thrown wide like the gates of paradise under that pleading, desperate lidded gaze. 

“I think I’ll die if you don’t,” Sora mumbled, pressing tight to Riku’s too-hot neck, a mess of warmth and fear and the throbbing of his heartbeat over them all and the tickle of lips on his throat.

He wanted to say: _ me too. _

Riku would not _ let _ him die, not again.

For one long second, Riku’s gaze found Sora’s, and he read the answer in his eyes, the answer to thousands of prayers laid out as bare as if they had spoken it, and for a second, they both smiled, trembling on a precipice.

_ Finally. _

_ Finally. _

_ A lifetime of moments, and finally, this. _

Riku _ ate _ of the fruit, tilted his head and crashed up into Sora's waiting mouth so quickly it was more of a _ bite _, teeth on lips—and Sora was everywhere, crushed tightly against him in any way he could reach, Riku’s hands tight around his waist to take his weight, his soul like sweet juice on Riku’s tongue with a moan as he traced the seam of his lips, and then it was open-mouthed and messy and both of them begging for absolution.

His hands found Sora’s face, bracketed his cheeks with a brush of the backs of soft, shaking fingers and swallowed Sora’s answering sound, something soft and warm and just for him, and their pace slowed with it, hesitant and asking. 

His hands cradled Sora’s cheeks, thumbs brushing into the soft skin under his eyes, darker now with memories, soaked in Sora’s little sob in response. Riku’s tongue brushed Sora’s, the feeling of it, the drag and press and release so good it was sending everything from his mind, he wanted to do this forever, until the end came and he was still here, _ kissing Sora _—

Riku was pressing every unanswered question into this kiss and _ hoping _ he was heard. _ Real, real, this was real _ —his mind focused on that, focused on Sora’s nails gripping his shoulders so hard it nearly hurt, Sora’s legs tangled with his and their _ hips _ —Sora suddenly shifted down into him, the angle _ perfect _ —and Sora broke the kiss on a moan to _ shake, shake and shake _ and let his head fall to Riku’s shoulder, breathing stuttered and uneven as his own.

Sora was just as hard as he was, he could _ feel _ that, and Riku was drunk, delirious with the knowledge, he _ wanted _ Sora everywhere all at once in so many ways it was flooding into him and making him push up into it, to meet Sora’s hips again and _ again—anything _ to produce that sound he wanted to devour, that hitching, gasping noise as Sora finally pressed _ down _ , because _ Sora wanted him too, _the thin fabric of their flannel pants doing absolutely nothing to keep them apart, no, paradise and purgatory crashed into one, one and the same and never separate again—

His heart caught fire.

Praise spilled from his lips, whispered into the shell of Sora's ear, secrets he’d been keeping laid bare under that searing light, between the jerky rolls of Sora against him and Riku’s hands creeping just under his shirt, cradling his waist, secure and _ real _.

Tentative, delirious with want—his hands slid farther down for a moment, sealed themselves around his hips, and Sora made a sharp little sound, too loud for the room—and Riku made to shift his grip but Sora tugged his hands back in their place, lifting his hips up into his hands insistently until they were filled, full of _ Sora _ —Riku held him down. “Yes,” Sora gasped into his throat. “_Yes_—“

Riku leaned back to press their foreheads together for a moment, felt Sora pant against his mouth, and that, too, was too much--he _ had _ to surge forward to capture his lips again, licking past the seam immediately, running his teeth along the lips he’d wanted to kiss for as long as he could remember, Sora’s head tilting to follow him down, pressing into his mouth in return, both of them breaking the kiss to gasp.

There was a cycle to their motion, like a wave creating over his thighs in the commanding strength of high tide, Sora’s hips canting up to catch that momentum and then _ down _ , a push and _ pull _ of cosmic forces moving them together in a dance they’d been performing for years, _ waves kissing shore kissing waves kissing Sora _.

His teeth sunk too hard into the dip of Sora’s shoulder, he was sure, but he lapped over it in apology, sucking and licking a path of freckles back to his ear as Sora’s breath hitched and restarted in time, both of them working up to a frenzied, ecstatic tempo, Sora’s sounds frequent and glorious and unending, Riku would spend eternity suffused in those sounds—

“Sora,” he murmured against the shell of his ear as he _ breathed _ against it, absolutely out of his mind with delirium, a worshipper at the feet of Bacchus, begging for an offering. “ _ Please _ ,” and Sora gave a final cry and shuddered above him, rolled so hard into Riku he gasped and saw colors behind his own eyes as Sora’s hips sent sparks into his gut, his hands clamping automatically to Sora’s thighs—his legs so hot through the thin fabric it _ burned _ —to keep him in place as he _ shook and shook and shook apart _ in his arms, little tremors like earthquakes beneath his skin that gradually faded away and left him slumped over Riku, dark lashes quivering over flushed red freckled cheeks, forehead nearly on Riku’s chest.

Riku was _ so close _ he could probably come just like this, watching Sora take his pleasure from him, willingly given, a humble servant of this being of light in his arms, but Sora drew himself up shakily, twitching every so often, and _ looked _ at him—searched his face shyly, unsure, but Riku spared him. He pulled him down and kissed him softly, and Riku felt tears pricking at his lids, felt the familiar words building and _ building _ behind his teeth until the pressure was worse to clamp down around it, until it felt like it was holding his jaws open, the words a wedge.

“Sora,” He said finally, voice thick. “Sora, I—“

“Love you,” Sora finished, something unknowable shining in his half-lidded eyes. “I know. Me...me too.”

Riku blinked. “You—you _ know _ ?” Wait. “You _ too _?”

“Well I _ didn’t—know-know _ before ten minutes ago,” Sora confessed, and Riku wanted to _ laugh _ because out of the ten-thousand ways he had planned this, none of them had gone like _ this _ . So he buried his face in Sora’s sweaty neck and _ laughed _ , long and slow and wet, until Sora was _ laughing _ too, burying hands in his hair as Riku tightened his arms around him, his own arousal forgotten for the moment.

“Sorry. I _ definitely _ ruined your moment,” Sora said, the remnants of laughter tipping into a sob. “I didn’t...plan it that way.”

“You haven’t ruined anything,” Riku said.. Sora had never ruined a thing in his whole life. Even his mistakes eventually bloomed good and beautiful and bore fruit. “You’re _ perfect _.”

“_ Sap _,” He shot back, grinning through the tears. So Riku kissed him again, brushed his lips across trails of freckles-like-stars painting his cheekbones and tried not to weep.

Sora pulled away and Riku’s head thumped back against the sheets, the rest of his strength gone, but Sora chased him down, biting into his shoulder, trailing kisses up his throat to his ear, sucking and pressing kisses there in apology. “Riku,” he said between motions.

“Y-Yeah,” he answered, painful awareness of his own body filtering back in a different way as Sora pressed him down with his body weight once more and reminded him how _ close _ he was, leaking into his boxers.

“I really, _ really _ love you, okay?” Sora said, eyes like pools in the dark, and this had to be a dream, because nothing so good would ever happen to him in waking life—he didn’t deserve it. 

_ Really _, it echoed around Riku’s mind and out his mouth, dizzy and wild, the whole world tilting on its access.

“I love you,” Riku said, his whole chest singing. “S-so much. _ So much _ , Sora.” He said it and knew it was describing something divine with sadly mortal words, things he could never _ profane _ in something so simple, but he tried.

“Okay,” Sora said, then brushed the hair away from his ear to lean down and speak into it. “Now _ let me touch you _ ,” Sora said, and it came out as a _ plead _ ; a beg—as if Sora would ever have to _ beg _ him for anything he already had. “ _ Please _,” he said again.

“Are you sure?” Riku asked, his hand entwining with Sora’s.

“Let me do this,” Sora said. “I want to. I’ve...wanted to.”

“Okay,” Riku heard himself say, faint as all his remaining blood rushed south. He had never been so turned on in his _ life _. “Yeah.”

Sora tucked himself against Riku’s right side, his left arm thrown over his chest and his head tucked into Riku’s neck securely, soft hair ticking his chin and it felt r_ ight _ , like they were made to do this, to _ be _ like this, even with Riku’s heart hammering at the bell in his chest. 

He guided Sora’s hands to his pants, the drawstring undone clumsily between two hands twined together that refused to let go and laughing kisses and whispered words, the motions awkward and new but the _ feeling _ blooming bright between them.

“You okay?” Sora whispered against his throat, the sound vibrating against the skin there, and he was hard enough by now that it almost pushed him over the edge, gripped in the hands of delirious ecstasy.

All he could do was nod, quivering violently, grateful that Sora’s weight was anchoring him down.

Sora’s hand pulled up his rumpled shirt the rest of the way and ran itself slowly down the hard lines of his chest, his stomach, dipped into his belly button teasingly before it slid south in a torturous drag that had him baring his throat and clenching his hands, every teasing finger igniting white behind his eyelids. 

“Stay with me,” Sora murmured, and Riku hissed as Sora’s fingers finally brushed him through his boxers, _ too hot _ on already sticky fabric, his hips arching helplessly into the touch. He felt Sora swallow roughly, and Riku felt for purchase on the back of his neck, squeezing him closer as Sora finally pushed the fabric down and tentatively took him in his hand. “I’ve got you,” Sora was saying, whispering into his skin as Riku shook and shook and hoped he did, because he didn’t _ have _ himself, forgot where he ended and Sora _ began _.

Sora remade him between his hands with the deft strokes of a painter, bright colors streaking across the insides of Riku’s eyelids as his nails found Sora’s scalp and he held on and trembled, helpless to the vision of what Sora saw he could be, of what Sora _ knew _ him to be. If he was making sounds, it was impossible to stop them, and Sora’s encouraging little keens in his ear made it impossible to _ want _ to. He was mouthing words into his skin, words meant only for Riku. “God, Riku—“ he said, and “ _ You’re _ the perfect one, look at you—“

It was too slow and too fast at once, Sora’s hand twisted around him on the upstroke and his whole focus narrowed to the glide of his hand, arched his hips into that touch because if _ this _ was surrender, Riku understood, Sora could have _ all _ of him, eternally, this was the final piece of his devotion.

It was Sora’s hands on his skin, and Sora’s _ warmth _ on him, and Sora’s voice in his ear with his hot puffs on breath mixed with mindless kisses where he was curled into his neck as he touched him like he belonged there, and Riku’s hands fisted in his hair, too soft between his hands, his pinprick focus on the wave building behind his chest and in his stomach until Sora hooked a leg over his legs and pressed _ down _, and that was it—he arched his back in holy sacrifice and painted Sora’s fingers with his release, eyes sliding shut in ecstasy, he saw fire and angels and the end of mortal men behind his eyelids, all at once.

The syllables of Sora’s name broke like wafers on his tongue. 

Sora kissed him back down sweetly, the barest, slowest press of lips as his nails snuck into Riku’s hair and held him there by the roots, gently cradled the weight of his skull and secured him to earth as Sora tasted him again and again, pressing into him everywhere that mattered, and he felt _ wanted and seen and home and too much _ , _ too much _ to go from one agony to another, and his cheeks were wet before he knew what had happened.

Heedless of his tears, he pressed harder, an insistent question of lips, and Sora pressed back with a pleased sound, as if to say _ yes, yes, yes, _close mouthed and soft, the chaste insistence there breaking something free in his chest.

The kiss only broke when Riku started to cry in earnest, the feeling of it cresting over, delayed, like river water through his fingers, something swift and uncatchable that begin with little shudders and rose to a crescendo of ugly, gasping sobs like he hadn’t produced in years, his whole chest a mess of light and too many things and holy knowledge like _ you are loved, you are loved. _

Sora pulled back to tuck him into his chest, and Riku pulled them flush, eyes pressed so hard to Sora's unevenly rising chest that it hurt, soaking through the shirt to the warm skin beneath as Sora carded his hair and encouraged him, allowed him to empty everything into him in sacrifice, and Sora could have all of it, it belonged to him from the beginning and it would be his still at their end.

Riku’s hands snaked under the back of his shirt, one around his waist and the other sliding up to seek purchase at the base of his skull, curling over the knobs of vertebrae—reassuring, somehow, that Sora was _ real and human and here _—a motion Sora met with a contented sigh. 

“Hey, hey,” Sora murmured against his ear, and Riku felt like a mess—he was rapidly cooling and sticky and his shirt was half on and his boxers were still half off and he was clinging to Sora and crying his whole soul out without an end in sight. 

“You’re okay,” Sora said soothingly, pressing lazy kisses to his cheekbone, the corner of his eyes, the side of his throat over his pulse and whenever he could reach without moving too far. “It’s okay.” _ We’re okay. _ “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said again, in wonder, in exaltation.

“I’ve...wanted to do that for a long time.”

Riku could have asked: _ which part? _ But he _ knew _.

“Me...too.”

“Wow. We’re great at this,” Sora said, smile so wide it could have split his face, Riku knowing he was mirroring that dopey grin, even with puffy, pathetic eyes.

“Better late than never describes us pretty well,” he said, knocking his forehead against Sora’s, still sniffling. 

Riku tried to speak further, but his throat was still thick and made something of a whimper instead, so Sora slid his hands under Riku’s back and clung, squeezed so tightly it bordered on pain and Riku twitched.

“Sorry,” Sora said, muffled into his shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”

“You could never hurt me,” Riku said, his voice all raw and broken like someone who’d been wandering the desert for forty days. 

Sora laughed ruefully. 

“You’re wrong there.”

“_ I can handle a little pain _,” Riku quoted, pitching his voice slighter higher and laughing a little at his own joke. 

“I know you can,” Sora answered, a little smile at the corner of his mouth, puffing hot air against Riku’s neck. “Just want you to share.” Distantly, Riku felt him entwine their fingers, slotted together effortlessly like they belonged there, a matched set. Somehow, hearing it on Sora’s tongue made it warmer.

“I’ll try,” Riku said, feeling small. Sora squeezed him in response. “But only if you share first.”

Sora’s eyes sparkled. “Deal.”

Riku’s awareness filtered back to him with his senses, his fingers tingled as he got his breath back. The rain pattered away outside, still, and he wondered for the first time how much time had passed—it had felt like molasses in his hands, sticky and slow and sated like they were.

“We should get changed,” he began.

“Don’t wanna,” Sora almost whined, and Riku laughed wetly. Same old Sora, after everything. “I’m _ tired _.”

“Okay, lazybones. Don’t complain to me about how you’re itchy tomorrow morning.” He felt drunk, hand tracing letters from unknown languages across Sora’s spine, Sora warm and real and _ tangible _ on his chest, limbs twined bonelessly with his own.

He was _ tired _ too, he realized suddenly. He hadn’t felt it before because of the pain, but it was— _ it was gone _. The absence of it was strange. He gently nudged Sora’s head to the side with his shoulder (which was met with an irritated sound) so he could raise his arm, flexing the hand experimentally in the dim light.

Nothing. 

“Sora,” he said. “Does your wrist hurt anymore?”

He yawned at the question, blue eyes already slipping back to closed. “No, why? Does yours? Thought I...took all of it…”

“No,” he breathed. “How did you…” Riku swallowed, his heart still too fast, throat too dry. “Why did you do that, anyway?”

“What? Your...oh, that? Sora blushed, and nudged himself under Riku’s limp arm like it was a blanket to curl under and shut his eyes again. “You’re gonna laugh at me. It’s stupid.”

“I won’t,” Riku said. “Nothing you think is stupid.”

“Well...I...I’ve seen true love’s kiss heal wounds, and stuff. Bring people back from the dead, even. So I think I just...wanted to see. If it would...work? Even if you didn’t, you know...feel the same.”

“Sora…” Riku said, tears welling up again. That meant Sora had known, before this moment. Had known for a while, probably.

“This is why you should _ tell _ me things, Riku,” Sora said. “I could’ve helped.”

He wanted to say: _ which thing? _

Sora’s hand shot out to pat at his cheek blindly, since his eyes were still closed. “Yes, Riku, I mean both things.”

Oh. _ Oh _. He’d said that out loud.

He could have said: how was I supposed to know your kiss apparently heals wounds of the flesh and wounds of the soul? But he didn’t, because of course they did, he was Sora, and he made miracles. Laughter was bubbling in his throat, again.

“You laughing at me after all?”

“Always,” Riku said, and he pressed a kiss to Sora’s sleepy hair.

Sora tried to punch him, but it was so lethargic and uncoordinated it lacked any vigor, more the press of knuckles to his chest than anything. “Jerk,” he slurred.

“Love you,” Riku responded, and Sora tugged him possessively closer.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll remember that tomorrow,” Sora mumbled, his face pressed into Riku’s bicep as he clung to it.

“Somehow, I feel like you won’t.”

“I _ definitely _ will,” Sora mumbled. “Now come on, sleep with me. It’s your _ duty _, or something.”

“Well, actually—,” Riku began, but then snorted at the double entendre.

“And people say _ you’re _ the mature one,” Sora said, snickering. He curled closer, and Riku dragged the blankets up over his shoulders, knowing Sora would be cold without them.

“Nobody will believe you,” Riku said, curling his own body towards Sora, his head finding the pillows, lifting Sora’s head to stuff one under. He took the chance to press one last kiss to the corner of his mouth, still red and kiss-swollen, and Sora hummed in approval.

“They don’t have to,” Sora mumbled distantly. “I’ll know.”

“Okay,” Riku said. “Go to sleep, Sora.”

“You first,” he challenged, but Sora’s breathing was already falling into something slow and telling, his eyebrows drifting up to relax as he fell into slumber. The tug on the link was slow and building, gathering as Sora slipped back into the first layers of the dream.

They were so tightly entwined with that they may have been one entity: four legs, two heads, and one pattering heart to match the beat of the rain still falling overhead.

The cocoon of the rain and warmth and each other carried them away—Sora first, and Riku soon after.

**Author's Note:**

> 6 Set me as a seal upon your heart,  
as a seal upon your arm,  
for love is strong as death,  
jealousy is fierce as the grave.  
Its flashes are flashes of fire,  
the very flame of the Lord.  
7 Many waters cannot quench love,  
neither can floods drown it.
> 
> —The Song of Solomon, Old Testament


End file.
